In fairness to Vincent, the rewards for playing on ladder aren't that compelling - who really needs another token?
Honestly: I play Normal ~10x more often than Ranked. As pointed out there's no tangible reward for climbing ladder, and I find the opponents more congenial.
I do believe it was stated somewhere that the rule is:
1) You won’t open duplicates until you have all of that rarity in a set.
2) Once you have 2 of each card in a rarity, 1 if each Legendary, your next cards in that rarity will be any cards you don’t have 2 normal copies of.
So yes, it back fills your golden cards with normal copies once you have all of that rarity.
I have the entire set of Outland thanks to this protection rule, and I opened a Legendary in the Felosophy bundle. It was Lurker Below, which I have golden of from Pre-order. So I DE’d the golden copy to craft something later. My next one would be Lady Vashj as I also have her in golden. My next Academy epics will be Braggart or Devout Pupil because of this rule.
Well friends, the time has come. More difficult riddles have begun. Dont't take al lines "as it is". Maybe a hint is hidden in that or this.
Now a few words about our card. There is some kind of light on her art. The character is strong and cool. She's bad, but not bad like Gruul.
She got some weird stuff on her top. Are you asking me is she Madam Lazul? Nope. She found someone underground? Don't be glad. She's not like Catrina Muerte or Kel'thuzad.
She's not like Hogger, but stats are weak. Can destroy the entire board. Real quick. But not like Lord Godfrey or Deathwing. To the owner she can only do a good thing.
She can destroy spells. Knew about it? But she's not like Azari, the Devourer. I don't know what else I can add. Find information about her is hard.
A couple moments before the goal. Is she female? Maybe not after all. Is she legendary? Maybe no, maybe yes. To make it difficult for you to guess.
One more thought that just occurred to me - Hearthstone started as a card game that hewed very closely to WoW lore, but they started creating their own characters, lore, etc., over time to make room to add mechanics that made sense without having to add a WoW character in a way that didn't do justice to the original lore. For example, Raza the Chained was new to WoW lore as a result of Hearthstone. There are lots of alternatives from the base WoW lore Blizzard might have added, that might not have fit the actual mechanics of Raza - it's good they focused on set cohesion, and it's good they added something new rather than half-ass some existing character in the name of cohesion. This is something LoR is going to have to be willing to do. Why is Lulu in this set rather than any other set? I guess because Riot felt like it, because she doesn't have any mechanics that make her feel like a cohesive part of the Targon/Call of the Mountain expansion, because there's vanishingly little that makes the whole set cohesive to begin with, so these secondary regions feel messy/out of sync. Sure, she does support stuff, but that's a mechanic every region has access to.
@Sykomyke, thanks! I think you're exactly right about Riot trying to reinvent the wheel. It's hard to say whether they are doing so because they believe they can actually build a better card game model, or if their design approach just happens to work that way because of how deeply influenced it is by their work in the MOBA space. My guess is the latter, but only because I think several of their "innovations" have made the core LoR game worse, not better.
The short answer I have to your question about the mechanics like Daybreak and Nightfall is no, I don't expect to see them in other expansions (at least no more than a card or two). But, as I'll get into below, I think the problem has less to do with whether the mechanic comes up in future sets and more to do with how narrowly they used the mechanic in this set. Riot seems intent on adding lots of mechanics rather than using a few mechanics in a lot of places, and I think that's a critical issue in the context of their expansions.
With respect to your argument about "gimmick" mechanics that exist for a single expansion, I don't fully agree. I think it's good to see CCGs take some risks with their mechanics, and when those risks don't pay off, it's good to see them drop them. Of course, when they do pay off, it's good to see them revisited. Discover and Rush are two examples in Hearthstone which I think have been pretty positive additions overall (though they're not without their issues), but and there are some other mechanics that I've enjoyed that haven't made comebacks. So I'm with you on that, it's disappointing to see Blizzard take a mechanic that feels like it could become evergreen and just drop it immediately.
But there's value in having mechanics that don't become part of every expansion moving forward, as it helps to focus the over-arching theme of the expansion. Spellburst and Echo are two examples from Hearthstone, but MTG also does a great job with this. One of my favorite recent examples from MTG was the use of 1/1 counters in War of the Spark - the "bad guy" colors got "amass," which let them build up counters on one creature, while the "good guy" colors got "proliferate," which let them do smaller, but widespread counter buffs across creatures and planeswalkers. It was a fun thematic element to the mechanics that I don't expect will be revisited any time soon in any upcoming set, but I also don't mind because of how core it was to the theme of the set - it would just feel out of place elsewhere.
That doesn't mean that they should never revisit these set-specific mechanics. MTG does a great job of bringing old mechanics back in new sets when they make sense (usually when the set "revisits" an old plane - e.g. the upcoming Zendikar set is revisiting the "landfall" mechanic). Hearthstone should probably consider doing the same. Maybe they think the game is still young enough that they should just explore more new content, but I think they're probably old enough to revisit old content. For example, it's easy to imagine a "Return to Un'goro" set in the future that revisits the "adapt" mechanic, and as someone who loved the Un'goro expansion, I'd be 100% in favor of that.
The biggest thing to me is the question of whether or not mechanics are well-distributed. Your examples of Plunder, Daybreak, and Nightfall are all excellent examples of very narrowly applied mechanics. Each exists in two or fewer regions today, typically in service of a single champion, and while Riot will probably add a new card for these mechanics here and there (e.g. Monkey Business), the volume of cards added as support for these mechanics will probably be very low. This is unfortunately a reality of how they're adding sets - each existing region gets about 13 cards, but a "new champion package" typically takes 10, so there's very little room to reinvest in old archetypes, and in every set they have more old archetypes in need of investment.
But if they had, from the start, built out mechanics that were widespread (e.g. adding Daybreak and Nightfall cards to each region), then there would already been a lot of room for experimenting with the mechanic, and lots of room to try different synergies. It wouldn't matter as much whether or not they added new Daybreak/Nightfall cards because there would be enough at the start to push players to think about lots of region pairs as new content was added. Quick hypothetical: we can imagine a world where Freljord got some card named "Season of the Sun" that riffs off the long, sunny summers near the North Pole, and has some cool Daybreak ability. Maybe the Daybreak Targon/Freljord deck is bad today, but later one of those regions gets a couple of new cards that happen to work in that archetype - they don't even have to be Daybreak cards. That can make players revisit the idea of running Leona and a Daybreak package in that pairing, and that's fantastic. But, because of how narrowly defined the synergies are, any "off-synergy pairing" (e.g. running Noxus Self Harm with Demacia) has to be successful on the merits of a single region's synergy cards. This does happen, but mostly just when one region is too powerful in the metagame.
That hypothetical gets at the kind of thing I expect from a healthy card game. We see that in MTG all the time - they plan out how every pair or even triples of colors will interact in each set, and over time the player has the option of revisiting those set/combination mechanics as the overall card pool changes. Hearthstone, by contrast, tends to emphasize archetypes within a class, but then provide neutral cards to bolster lots of different archetypes. The net result of both approaches is the same - each color/class/region has access to a huge number of new cards and archetypes (MTG typically adds about 50 cards per color, Hearthstone typically adds about 10 cards per class plus 30 neutrals). But in LoR, mechanics are narrowly defined in only a couple of sets, and there are no "neutrals" to fill in gaps, so the result is a major reduction in the the level of agency a player has to make deck-building choices.
Getting to the highest tier of ranked play in ANY card game will always involve seeing a lot of meta decks and opponents who do not make mistakes. I'm not sure how you could reasonably expect otherwise.
Some streamers just tell their viewers upfront that they care more about fun than rank and that they aren't going to worry about grinding to Master. In the end, no one but you will ever care whether you hit Master or not, so yes, it's correct to stop grinding if you don't think grinding is fun.
Thanks for the feedback! However, I might scrap the current card for something new, as I don’t really like it and the general consensus seems somewhat lukewarm....
I missed these now I can give no feedback and make overloaded cards again! Nah I'll give feedback it just won't be very good.
Feedback Only for this page:
Show Spoiler
GoliathTheDwarf I think it looks good, like a lesser corrupted keeper or whatever his name was but instead of always getting the 2/2 body and the damage you have to chose the body or the damage.
BloodMefist: I can't really think of anything you could improve upon. My personal preference for art is the first one since it gives the feeling of he found out about the necromantic stuff going on
I'd advise against going for Masters.
Honestly: I play Normal ~10x more often than Ranked. As pointed out there's no tangible reward for climbing ladder, and I find the opponents more congenial.
an addition to the no duplicate rule?
I do believe it was stated somewhere that the rule is:
1) You won’t open duplicates until you have all of that rarity in a set.
2) Once you have 2 of each card in a rarity, 1 if each Legendary, your next cards in that rarity will be any cards you don’t have 2 normal copies of.
So yes, it back fills your golden cards with normal copies once you have all of that rarity.
I have the entire set of Outland thanks to this protection rule, and I opened a Legendary in the Felosophy bundle. It was Lurker Below, which I have golden of from Pre-order. So I DE’d the golden copy to craft something later. My next one would be Lady Vashj as I also have her in golden. My next Academy epics will be Braggart or Devout Pupil because of this rule.
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
No, it's not
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Is it... Mindrender Illucia?
Hearthstone's Cupcake Card Back is Now Available in the In-Game Shop
It won’t let me buy it. *Checks Collection Manager* Oh wait!
Soul Slayer DH
Regarding the Runner, I hadn't considered the synergy with Altruis, you're probably right to keep the Runner.
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
little riddle
Well friends, the time has come.
More difficult riddles have begun.
Dont't take al lines "as it is".
Maybe a hint is hidden in that or this.
Now a few words about our card.
There is some kind of light on her art.
The character is strong and cool.
She's bad, but not bad like Gruul.
She got some weird stuff on her top.
Are you asking me is she Madam Lazul? Nope.
She found someone underground? Don't be glad.
She's not like Catrina Muerte or Kel'thuzad.
She's not like Hogger, but stats are weak.
Can destroy the entire board. Real quick.
But not like Lord Godfrey or Deathwing.
To the owner she can only do a good thing.
She can destroy spells. Knew about it?
But she's not like Azari, the Devourer.
I don't know what else I can add.
Find information about her is hard.
A couple moments before the goal.
Is she female? Maybe not after all.
Is she legendary? Maybe no, maybe yes.
To make it difficult for you to guess.
So who thought that a region being generally good at card advantage was a good idea?
One more thought that just occurred to me - Hearthstone started as a card game that hewed very closely to WoW lore, but they started creating their own characters, lore, etc., over time to make room to add mechanics that made sense without having to add a WoW character in a way that didn't do justice to the original lore. For example, Raza the Chained was new to WoW lore as a result of Hearthstone. There are lots of alternatives from the base WoW lore Blizzard might have added, that might not have fit the actual mechanics of Raza - it's good they focused on set cohesion, and it's good they added something new rather than half-ass some existing character in the name of cohesion. This is something LoR is going to have to be willing to do. Why is Lulu in this set rather than any other set? I guess because Riot felt like it, because she doesn't have any mechanics that make her feel like a cohesive part of the Targon/Call of the Mountain expansion, because there's vanishingly little that makes the whole set cohesive to begin with, so these secondary regions feel messy/out of sync. Sure, she does support stuff, but that's a mechanic every region has access to.
Hearthstone's Cupcake Card Back is Now Available in the In-Game Shop
Bliz: "Yeah um so for three bucks you can have a card back with frosting"
Me:
Looking for criticism for my deck Lulu Zed Elusive Supports
I, too, tried to make Zed work with Lulu, but I soon learned that no matter how you build it, there are better Champions for this list than Zed.
As Sanns hinted, since this list in particular is so Ionia-heavy, you may even want to pick a different second region to find someone better.
Best Lists To Beat Targon - Open Forum
We've actually seen Targon on mass being evaluated lower by pro players a week after the sets release.
So I think it was possible to counter the region whether that is just play pattern knowledge or including different tech options in old lists.
That's why I tried to go through a few popular archetypes in the new set and lay out how to beat them
Dragons, lulu, and daylight in this instance
But I could literally go through every deck type of the new set and outline its weak points if you prefer
So who thought that a region being generally good at card advantage was a good idea?
@Sykomyke, thanks! I think you're exactly right about Riot trying to reinvent the wheel. It's hard to say whether they are doing so because they believe they can actually build a better card game model, or if their design approach just happens to work that way because of how deeply influenced it is by their work in the MOBA space. My guess is the latter, but only because I think several of their "innovations" have made the core LoR game worse, not better.
The short answer I have to your question about the mechanics like Daybreak and Nightfall is no, I don't expect to see them in other expansions (at least no more than a card or two). But, as I'll get into below, I think the problem has less to do with whether the mechanic comes up in future sets and more to do with how narrowly they used the mechanic in this set. Riot seems intent on adding lots of mechanics rather than using a few mechanics in a lot of places, and I think that's a critical issue in the context of their expansions.
With respect to your argument about "gimmick" mechanics that exist for a single expansion, I don't fully agree. I think it's good to see CCGs take some risks with their mechanics, and when those risks don't pay off, it's good to see them drop them. Of course, when they do pay off, it's good to see them revisited. Discover and Rush are two examples in Hearthstone which I think have been pretty positive additions overall (though they're not without their issues), but and there are some other mechanics that I've enjoyed that haven't made comebacks. So I'm with you on that, it's disappointing to see Blizzard take a mechanic that feels like it could become evergreen and just drop it immediately.
But there's value in having mechanics that don't become part of every expansion moving forward, as it helps to focus the over-arching theme of the expansion. Spellburst and Echo are two examples from Hearthstone, but MTG also does a great job with this. One of my favorite recent examples from MTG was the use of 1/1 counters in War of the Spark - the "bad guy" colors got "amass," which let them build up counters on one creature, while the "good guy" colors got "proliferate," which let them do smaller, but widespread counter buffs across creatures and planeswalkers. It was a fun thematic element to the mechanics that I don't expect will be revisited any time soon in any upcoming set, but I also don't mind because of how core it was to the theme of the set - it would just feel out of place elsewhere.
That doesn't mean that they should never revisit these set-specific mechanics. MTG does a great job of bringing old mechanics back in new sets when they make sense (usually when the set "revisits" an old plane - e.g. the upcoming Zendikar set is revisiting the "landfall" mechanic). Hearthstone should probably consider doing the same. Maybe they think the game is still young enough that they should just explore more new content, but I think they're probably old enough to revisit old content. For example, it's easy to imagine a "Return to Un'goro" set in the future that revisits the "adapt" mechanic, and as someone who loved the Un'goro expansion, I'd be 100% in favor of that.
The biggest thing to me is the question of whether or not mechanics are well-distributed. Your examples of Plunder, Daybreak, and Nightfall are all excellent examples of very narrowly applied mechanics. Each exists in two or fewer regions today, typically in service of a single champion, and while Riot will probably add a new card for these mechanics here and there (e.g. Monkey Business), the volume of cards added as support for these mechanics will probably be very low. This is unfortunately a reality of how they're adding sets - each existing region gets about 13 cards, but a "new champion package" typically takes 10, so there's very little room to reinvest in old archetypes, and in every set they have more old archetypes in need of investment.
But if they had, from the start, built out mechanics that were widespread (e.g. adding Daybreak and Nightfall cards to each region), then there would already been a lot of room for experimenting with the mechanic, and lots of room to try different synergies. It wouldn't matter as much whether or not they added new Daybreak/Nightfall cards because there would be enough at the start to push players to think about lots of region pairs as new content was added. Quick hypothetical: we can imagine a world where Freljord got some card named "Season of the Sun" that riffs off the long, sunny summers near the North Pole, and has some cool Daybreak ability. Maybe the Daybreak Targon/Freljord deck is bad today, but later one of those regions gets a couple of new cards that happen to work in that archetype - they don't even have to be Daybreak cards. That can make players revisit the idea of running Leona and a Daybreak package in that pairing, and that's fantastic. But, because of how narrowly defined the synergies are, any "off-synergy pairing" (e.g. running Noxus Self Harm with Demacia) has to be successful on the merits of a single region's synergy cards. This does happen, but mostly just when one region is too powerful in the metagame.
That hypothetical gets at the kind of thing I expect from a healthy card game. We see that in MTG all the time - they plan out how every pair or even triples of colors will interact in each set, and over time the player has the option of revisiting those set/combination mechanics as the overall card pool changes. Hearthstone, by contrast, tends to emphasize archetypes within a class, but then provide neutral cards to bolster lots of different archetypes. The net result of both approaches is the same - each color/class/region has access to a huge number of new cards and archetypes (MTG typically adds about 50 cards per color, Hearthstone typically adds about 10 cards per class plus 30 neutrals). But in LoR, mechanics are narrowly defined in only a couple of sets, and there are no "neutrals" to fill in gaps, so the result is a major reduction in the the level of agency a player has to make deck-building choices.
Best Lists To Beat Targon - Open Forum
You don't counter a region; you counter an archetype.
Targon in particular supports several very different archetypes that are countered by very different strategies and lists.
I would recommend picking one archetype and starting a new thread.
Free To Play Rewards - Week 2
So I got 1 out of a weekly vault open last Thursday, one from the Ionia region rewards, and one for 3000 gems
You want to be thinking about you free to play grind that way.
Here's a deck I want to try, here's the best and fastest way to get there.
Trundle is next for me and it will probably take a week to get there depending on lucky upgrades
And yes 1 tiger was worth it
I'd advise against going for Masters.
Getting to the highest tier of ranked play in ANY card game will always involve seeing a lot of meta decks and opponents who do not make mistakes. I'm not sure how you could reasonably expect otherwise.
Some streamers just tell their viewers upfront that they care more about fun than rank and that they aren't going to worry about grinding to Master. In the end, no one but you will ever care whether you hit Master or not, so yes, it's correct to stop grinding if you don't think grinding is fun.
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
That's correct! One of my favorite-cards-that-I-don't-actually-own.
Your turn, sir!
JustATaco's Odd Taunt Druid
maexxena? this deck doesn't run it....
Hearthstone's September Card Back, Faerie Tail, Has Arrived!
Looks good; next month's one as well.
Hearthstone's September Card Back, Faerie Tail, Has Arrived!
Such a nice card back that I'm going to log in and do a few games just to get it, even though I don't really play much anymore.
First Day Of School - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Thanks for the feedback! However, I might scrap the current card for something new, as I don’t really like it and the general consensus seems somewhat lukewarm....
First Day Of School - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
I missed these now I can give no feedback and make overloaded cards again! Nah I'll give feedback it just won't be very good.
Feedback Only for this page:
BloodMefist: I can't really think of anything you could improve upon. My personal preference for art is the first one since it gives the feeling of he found out about the necromantic stuff going on
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Kathrena Winterwisp
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Nope, try again!
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Spirit Echo
Hearthstone's Cupcake Card Back is Now Available in the In-Game Shop
Yep, i have the same issue also with the Naxrammas cardback, i reported it in the forums but it seems that blizzard dont take care about it.